Blue Mountains Conservancy plans Earth Day cleanup at Heritage Pond Center

Blue Mountains Conservancy is asking La Grande residents to spend two hours Friday, April 25, cleaning up Heritage Pond Education Center, with work slated from 1 to 3 p.m. at 913 S. Miller Drive. Volunteers will saw and give away firewood, spread mulch, plant native trees and shrubs, pull weeds and possibly help build a new theater floor for the apple tree play area.

The short cleanup gives Union County a practical Earth Day project with a visible payoff. Instead of a symbolic observance, the work will focus on a specific place where a few hours of labor can improve the grounds, support habitat and make the site better suited for environmental education.

Heritage Pond is a 4.5-acre parcel with a 1.5-acre wetland on the southern edge of La Grande. Blue Mountains Conservancy acquired the property in 2015 with support from The Penstemon Fund, administered by Oregon Community Foundation, and says the site now serves its mission to protect open lands from development, enhance wildlife habitat and provide accessible environmental education. The property is not generally open to the public, but it is available for environmental education classes.

The land carries more than one layer of history. Blue Mountains Conservancy says remnants of an apple orchard remain near two late 19th-century houses, and that the pond itself was dug in the 1940s by a previous owner as a swimming hole for his children. Today, the same site supports great blue heron, Pacific tree frogs, great horned owl, mule deer, migratory waterfowl and western painted turtle, a species of concern in Oregon.

The cleanup also fits into a broader shift in the conservancy’s work. In 2022, the board adopted a new mission, vision and strategic plan centered on Heritage Pond in La Grande and End Creek Wetland in Summerville, with an emphasis on habitat enhancement, historic conservation and nature-based education. Blue Mountains Conservancy says its vision is a healthy ecosystem at Heritage Pond Education Center, End Creek Wetland and the Elkhorn Property that provides wildlife habitat, educational opportunities and a local place to connect to nature.

That local focus includes a land acknowledgment naming the Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla and Nez Perce peoples as the original inhabitants of the land now known as Pete’s Pond and the surrounding area, tying the cleanup to a larger stewardship effort rooted in place, history and access to nature.